Single mode fiber optic local area networks employing star ring or bus structures cannot provide the redundancy required for reliable communications in a tactical military situation in which links are subject to damage from the movement of military equipment and vehicles as well as enemy action, and cannot provide the flexibility required for communications between frequently relocating units.
A simple two way grid, shown in FIG. 1, may be fabricated to cover, for example, a ten by ten kilometer area in which dispersed units will connect to the nearest mode each time they relocate. It would be desirable to provide a switching algorithm which would flood the network, providing a message to all nodes so that the system need not know at which node a particular unit is located. Thus, no configuration or reconfiguration following a units move is required. It would also be desirable to provide a grid network having a large number of redundant paths, ensuring a very high probability that a path will exist even in the face of significant network damage, where many links between nodes are severed.